Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Countdown to Hawking's weightless flight

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is preparing to make his first "weightless" trip on Thursday on an aircraft that flies parabolic arcs to simulate microgravity.

On Wednesday, the other 26 people scheduled for the trip will make a test run of the flight. But Hawking will not be among them; he will be replaced by a "stunt dummy" ? a teenager who is about the same height and weight as Hawking. The term makes me chuckle because even though it was not meant as a commentary on the teen's intellect, basically anyone would be considered a dummy compared to one of the most brilliant minds of our time, myself included.

His fellow passengers include some of Hawking's physicians, as well as flight coaches, charity auction winners and other staff of Zero Gravity Corporation, the company that operates the flight out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US.

The Boeing 727 flies these parabolic arcs between an altitude of 24,000 and 32,000 feet (7300 and 9750 metres). It is when the plane reaches the top of this arc that participants feel 25 to 30 seconds of weightlessness. Then the plane plunges down and people can feel about 1.8 g's towards the bottom of the arc at 24,000 feet (see a similar flight profile as described on a NASA site).

Speaking of parabolic flights, I just found this NASA site yesterday with all kinds of fun videos of water balloons popping on a similar flight.

The above image was taken on a parabolic flight offered by the European Space Agency.